North-east
has been in the news for some time now. First the floods, then the
molestation and finally followed by the violence in Assam. If these were
feel-bad factors, we had the champion pugilist from Manipur, Mary Kom,
winning a medal for us at the London Olympics.

But even Kom's big feat failed to distinguish her home state in the imagination of mainland Indians.

Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan
hailed Kom's feat but erred in saying she was from Assam. And then, we
had a fiasco in the Parliament where apparently the issue was the
Centre's alleged inefficiency in dealing with the situation in Assam.
But soon, the focus of the brawl shifted to senior BJP leader LK
Advani's scathing attack on the UPA. Advani was heard saying that the
UPA government was illegitimate. And hence the slam bang...

But
where is north-east amid all this? If the common Indian (we include Mr
Bachchan) have failed to imagine north-east in their day-to-day life,
the failure of the leadership has been all the more glaring. While the
government has little ability to understand the depth of the problem and
is even not much ready to take responsibility of the pre-2009
evolutionary history for its time had started then, the Opposition has
no understanding of the nature of the problem at all. According to them, it is purely an immigration-related problem and has nothing to do with ethnic clashes! They also planned to hold a dharna at Jantar Mantar in the capital to protest against the Kokrajhar violence.

North-east
is not a region where mobilization of majority and minority sentiments
will do the trick for leaders skilled in manipulating vote banks.
Populism will neither help in finding an easy way out. The drama that
was played out in the Indian Parliament made one point very clear. The
Indian political leadership has neither the vision nor the will to look
beyond the immediate concerns of sticking to power. Whereas the solution
to the problems of northeast can be achieved through a deep and
concerted effort.

Assam already was a boiling pot
Assam
has seen killings and displacement on a mass scale since the partition.
The conflict in Assam is mainly centred around the natives, the Bengalis (both Hindus and Muslims) and the local tribals.
Huge number of migrants went to Assam from Bengal in the mid-19th
century to work in tea plantations created by the British and soon these
people outsmarted the natives to bag better professional opportunities
because of a better educational background. Bangladeshi Muslims, too,
entered the Assamese territory and these migrants, mainly peasants,
settled themselves in Assam after transforming waste tracts of land. The
native Assamese were cornered by an overwhelming Bengali population but
slowly found a chance to assert their rights. The third force, the
tribals, felt exploited in the hands of the two contending mainstream
groups and lack of political goodwill slowly led Assam towards an inevitable clash of sub-nationalisms.

Vote-bank politics added more to the woes
But
what added to the existing problem was the manipulative politics
encouraged by Congress governments, both at the Centre and the state.
Muslim migrants from Bangladesh
served as a strong vote-bank for the Congress and the later enrolled
these alien people shamelessly on electoral rolls. The CPI(M) did
something similar in West Bengal to ensure successive poll victories.
Such manipulation, as was expected, added fire to the flare-up and we
saw a deadly massacre at Nellie in 1983.

When we look to Assam and
the north-east today, the situation hasn't improved much. Even as India
is considered an emerging economy and a viable democracy, the Indian
nation-state continues to find itself fitted awkwardly in the north-east
and New Delhi has failed to utilise either economic or democratic
factors to script a turnaround.

The Indian government has a couple of serious jobs to do in north-east.

First, it must adopt a consistent policy vis-a-vis the influx of migrants. India, being a liberal democracy, is an easier shelter for people from the non-democratic neighbourhood. We have refugees from Bangladesh,
Bhutan, Myanmar, Tibet and Sri Lanka but extending a legal humanitarian
asylum is different from tolerating mass movement of refugees without
any check. This inflow is worrying not only because they add pressure on
basic resources but also pose serious threat to the country's internal
security in an era of strong terrorist networks. But the Indian
establishment has casualised the problem and left it for the border
forces to deal with iron hands. That does not ensure permanent solution
to the problem.

Neither the Congress nor BJP governments have
adopted a viable policy to stop the refugee flow except talking tough
periodically. The act to pick out illegal migrants enacted by the
Congress failed to deliver. Even the BJP government, after coming to
power in 1998, expressed helplessness and considered handing out work
permits to the illegal migrants in an effort to identify them! The
Indian government either has to legalise migration and make the process
more formal affair or has to stop it with an iron policy. There can be no sitting on the fence, all realistic problems notwithstanding.

Second, economy. The
government must ensure an economic development in the north-east and
for that, several measures can be undertaken. Thinking about north-east
with a mental block and looking through jaundiced eyes will not solve
the problem. We don't want the government take help of regulated market
forces to ensure development for the northeast? But it has to be an inclusive development and not at the expense of the local people.
Trying to force an exclusive model can still work in other states in
mainland India but certainly not in the north-east. The demographic
reality is too complex there.

Northeast needs icons

A
problem for the northeast is that it lacks icons who can help mobilise
the masses and reduce the gap with mainstream India. A few years ago, a
lad named Prashant Tamang, who won an all-India singing talentedition,
played a big role in a political mobilisation in northern Bengal, which
went on to change the region's politics irreversibly.

Similar
stories can be rewritten if people like Mary Kom, who ended up winning
an Olympic bronze, come forward and capitalise on their fame to benefit
the northeast. Indian masses find a feel-good icon more appealing than
tragic symbols like Irom Sharmila. If a more informal process of
interaction can be started somewhere leading to a growth of an inclusive
culture, then the political leadership will find the formal integration
of the north-east a more easier job.

India needs a teamwork to ensure that its north-east is living a healthy life. But is northeast the priority even after all the blood-shedding?